


Secondhand Source

by elise_509



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bottom Bucky Barnes, Bottom Steve Rogers, Group Sex, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Multiple Partners, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Public Sex, Semi-Public Sex, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-02
Updated: 2015-07-09
Packaged: 2018-04-02 11:56:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4059097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elise_509/pseuds/elise_509
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky has twisted their friendship into this strange, dangerous thing without Steve’s knowledge or consent. He should stop before it’s too late, but as long as Steve keeps bringing men home, Bucky can’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I got stuck while writing a long, angsty, smutty story with jealous, voyeuristic Bucky pining for a very sexually active Steve…so I took a break by writing a shorter but even more angsty and far smuttier story with jealous, voyeuristic Bucky pining for a very sexually active Steve. Makes sense.

_It began as an honest mistake._

_He never meant for it to happen._

Bucky repeats that to himself like a mantra, as if he can turn a poor excuse into a valid reason if only he can say it one more time. 

But as he stares at Steve and Steve stares back, anything left between them shatters, joining the broken glass that cuts into his skin as he kneels in that back alley.

It doesn’t matter how it started. He can’t deny it’s what he’s always wanted. And now Steve knows.

*******

**A Year Earlier**

“God damn you, Steve,” Bucky mutters to himself as he makes a second attempt to get his key into the lock of their apartment door. His head is fuzzy, and for once it’s not from booze. 

His good time had been cut woefully short by the sudden onslaught of aches and chills. He doesn’t often blame Steve for practically handing out an engraved invitation to every single illness that enters the Brooklyn limits – Steve can’t help his frail health, and he punishes himself enough for it that Bucky simply shuts his mouth and accepts the fact that being Steve’s best friend and roommate also means living with contagion. It usually seems like a very small price to pay to have Steve Rogers in his life, day in and day out. 

But tonight…oh, tonight, he’d finally wrangled a date with Colleen O’Reilly. Jet black hair, sparkling green eyes, and the fairest, creamiest skin he’s ever seen on a dame. Though a little on the skinny side, she still has perfect, full breasts, and curvaceous hips, which always sway in a mesmerizing way when she walks by. 

In a stroke of luck that he never considers too closely, most girls don’t turn him down for dates. Most girls, if not already going with another fella – and sometimes even if they _are_ – will give him at least one shot at a night out on the town. 

If a gal does tell him to shove off, he usually goes without a squabble. Persistent pursuits don’t seem doggedly romantic to him, just aggressive and ignorant. Steve’s often stepped in when a fella won’t leave a girl alone, and Bucky supposes Steve’s words and actions have shaped his own attitude over time.

But Colleen…he kept going back for more, each rejection seeming less like a sincere _no_ and more like a coy invitation to return and ask again some other day. Just when he’d made up his mind that it would be the last time he’d ask, she’d finally said yes. 

So Bucky certainly hadn’t planned on packing it in early, but after he’d ruined a handkerchief with a series of decidedly unappealing and ungentlemanly sneezes, Colleen had patted him on the shoulder and told him to go home. He’d protested profusely, but she put down a bill for her drink, gathered her purse and coat, and elegantly, swiftly, walked out. 

He spent part of the money he’d saved up for dinner on a taxi ride back to his and Steve’s shared apartment, the thought of taking the rattling, clattering subway too much to bear. His head was pounding enough already. Once home, it took him five minutes to get up the three flights of stairs to their door. 

A third attempt to match key to lock finally pays off and he stumbles inside. 

He’s sweating, but he feels so cold that he’s reluctant to take off his coat. He nudges the door shut behind him and leans against it, resting his eyes for a much-needed moment. 

As if the small ring weighs a ton, he tiredly lifts and hooks his keys onto the bent nail he and Steve had tapped in by the door, and then drags himself slowly into the living room. Bucky eyes the couch, wondering if it’d be so terrible to just lay there for awhile until he feels more like making the long trek to his and Steve’s shared bedroom. 

Steve’s spent many a night on the couch while sick, refusing to share the bed with him for fear of spreading his illness. Bucky’s only ever crashed there when too drunk to care or notice, but he supposes it can’t be all that uncomfortable if Steve can take it. 

He’s one step toward the ratty sofa when the noise catches his attention. The _moan._

In an instant, his own problems are forgotten because Steve’s clearly feeling worse. Another moan echoes down the hallway, much longer and pained. Something thuds, like something or _someone_ is dropping to the floor, and Bucky is wide-awake now.

He darts down the hallway and stops short in the doorway to the bedroom, Steve’s name dying a swift death on the tip of his tongue. 

_Because Steve is not alone._

No, Steve is naked and flat on his back, head toward the foot of his bed, with another man kneeling between his legs. This man is the exact opposite of Steve: olive-skinned and dark-featured, tall and broad and muscular. He has a five o’clock shadow along his square jawline, and curly, jet black hair from his chest trailing all the way down to the thick thatch between his thighs. His cock is thick and dark like the rest of him, except the rounded, pink head that nearly slips free from Steve’s hole every time his hips roll back. He’s got his huge, meaty hands at the backs of Steve’s knees, pushing his legs apart and back toward Steve’s chest as he pounds Steve into the mattress. 

Bucky’s initial instinct is that Steve is being attacked, being forced, that this couldn’t possibly be – but Steve meets the man halfway when he leans for a kiss, pulls him down so his massive weight is pressing Steve against the bed. They kiss like lovers, mouths open, tongues sliding deep, Steve’s long fingers tangling in the other man’s black hair. Steve whispers a name, too quiet for Bucky to hear, and the man answers back with Steve’s name on his lips like a prayer.

Bucky is so stunned he can’t move, can’t speak. He grips the doorframe hard enough that his fingernails hurt. He feels dizzy, and he’s not sure if it’s because he’s ill or because he’s in shock. Or maybe it’s because, in an unexpected twist, all the blood rushes straight from his brain right down to his cock as Steve actually begs for it _harder._

“Go deeper.” He’s never heard Steve sound like that, his voice positively aching with want. It _does_ something to him, makes something coil tight and hot in his gut, a feeling that’s far more intense than anything he’s ever had with a dame. 

The guy – who Bucky thinks he might recognize from around the neighborhood, maybe from one of the rare Italian families that doesn’t live in Bensonhurst – well, the guy gives Steve exactly what he asks for. He pulls back from their kiss and readjusts, tilting and practically _undulating_ his hips as he pushes harder, faster.

“Fuck, you feel so good.” The other man’s voice is husky and deep, a contrast to the breathy gasps Steve makes whenever that dick slides in, slides out, again, again. One of the man’s tan, work worn hands moves from the back of Steve’s knee to wrap around Steve’s cock, stroking him in time with the rocking of their bodies. Steve arches like he’s been zapped with a live wire.

And Steve, Steve’s whole body is different than the image of him Bucky holds in his head. Living together, sharing a bedroom, he’s seen Steve in his all together a number of times, but not like this. The frail body that has caused Bucky so much endless worry seems merely lean now, muscles tightly packed and stretched taut. He’s wound up like a spring because of what this… _stranger_ is doing to him. His pale skin seems the color of heavy cream rather than wan as skim milk, and the sweat that’s breaking all over his body makes him seem glowingly healthy rather than ill. He’s beautiful, and Bucky can’t even properly see his face.

Between Steve’s spread thighs, his cock is stiff with arousal and laying up flat against his stomach. Erect, he’s longer and thicker than Bucky remembered or expected; he’s seen Steve flaccid, maybe glanced at the bulge in his drawers in the morning when he woke up hard in the way that no guy, not even Steve Rogers, can help, but he’s never caught Steve in flagrante, hands on himself in the way the good Lord did not intend.

Bucky figures he’s more than making up for that at the moment, evening the score for the number of times Steve has heard or seen him in the middle of the night, walked in on him in the shower, or caught him making time with one of his dates.

Bucky knows exactly what it looks like now. With Steve’s partner having gone back to holding Steve’s legs, Steve takes his own cock in hand, pulling in a way that must be _exactly_ how he likes it because he’s on the edge of orgasm immediately. 

“I’m gonna come,” he whispers brokenly after a few strokes. “Oh, god, I’m gonna come.”

“Do it, come for me,” the guy demands, fucking him with all he’s got. Steve gasps, choking on air as he angles his cock back over his own stomach, foreskin pulled back and the rosy head of it pearly slick between his fingers. He bends in on himself, head and shoulders lifting off the bed, his stomach muscles visibly tightening, his legs tensing and his toes curling. Streaks of come paint his skin in a fantastically messy splatter. He strokes himself through it, milking out spurt after spurt.

“Always so much, always _so god damned much_ ,” The larger man pants as he keeps thrusting, awed and aroused by the sight and sound of Steve coming on his dick. His words aren’t lost on Bucky. This clearly isn’t the first time Steve has shared his bed, even the second. They’ve done this _many_ times. At least enough times that this man, this man who Bucky has never even seen _talk_ to Steve before, knows what Steve is like when he comes. 

Which is apparently like a god damned fountain, because his stomach and chest is dripping with it. Bucky’s never come that hard in his life, and he certainly wouldn’t have expected Steve, with his weak constitution, to have so much to spend. 

Steve throws his head back as he finishes, collapsing back down to the mattress. His eyes are closed in blissed out pleasure. Bucky stares at his friend, wanting to push his own cock past those pink, swollen lips and pour himself down Steve’s willing throat. It’s as terrifying a thought to him as it is an arousing one. 

Steve lifts his head, looking down the length of his body. His erection is quickly going limp, but pleased little whimpers are escaping his throat, everything evidently yet feeling good. 

“You want it in you?” The man grunts, hips hitting flush against Steve’s backside and thighs with every push. The slap of flesh on flesh is obscene. “Can I come inside you?” 

“Yes, god, yes.” Steve nods eagerly, wrapping his thin legs around that thick waist, trying to lock him in deep as he empties violently, shuddering and groaning. Bucky can’t wrap his mind around it – someone else is spilling himself inside Steve, pulsing deep and filling him hot and wet with come. Marking Steve as his, and cursing to high heaven as he does so. 

Steve’s orgasm had been high and breathy and beautiful; this guy is brutal, thundering his release in a way that’s sure to wake the neighbors. 

Bucky supposes that Steve should thank his lucky stars. As long as one side of a twosome manages to keep it down, no one will know both lovers are men. 

The larger man is actually trembling as he lays himself down on top of Steve, bodies molding together as they kiss again. After what seems like ages, he pulls away and looks down at the mess between their bodies, both their stomachs left sticky and wet now. He shifts his hips and slips free of Steve. The bedroom light is dim, but it still catches on his cock, shiny with come and slick. He strokes himself, shivering and surely oversensitive; his length hasn’t softened.

Steve fucking _spreads his legs wider,_ laying back against the bed.

“Put it back in me, ‘m so empty.” 

Bucky doesn’t know this person. He doesn’t understand how this is the Steve he sleeps next to every night, the one who _blushes_ when Bucky mentions anything near sexual. 

As he obliges Steve’s request, the man looks up, looks straight at Bucky and _winks_ at him. Steve moans as he pushes in.

Bucky’s heart seizes in his chest, blind panic ripping through his entire body. He stumbles back out of the doorway and plasters himself to the hallway wall. He’s breathing like he just ran a five mile race, his pulse so fast he can feel the thrum of it in his throat.

 _You have to go. Leave. Now, now, now._ He’s unable to get his feet to cooperate with the urgent commands from his brain. He’s frozen, so sure that Steve _must_ have heard that, must have _noticed_ as he tripped from the bedroom, announcing his presence with all the slapstick subtlety of Stan Laurel.

The fog in his mind clears enough that he realizes the squeaking of the bedsprings hasn’t ceased, that there’s kissing and there’s groaning and nothing at all has stopped. 

Not sure if he’s going to throw up or faint, Bucky staggers from the apartment and back outside. He makes it to the alley between their building and the grocer next door and braces himself against the brick. 

He’s hard, so god damn hard in his trousers that it physically hurts. He feels sick. Steve is with a man. His Steve. His innocent, virginal Steve – it was only yesterday that Bucky had been teasing him for his inexperience. Yet it’s clear that Steve is hardly inexperienced. Bucky’s morality is appalled, at Steve certainly, but even more so at himself. Because he’s jealous. He’s _so_ jealous. Even in his utter shock he knew immediately that he wanted to be the one doing that, wanted to be the one naked and writhing with his _best friend_ on their bed. 

Oh god, how long has Steve been fucking other men in their bed? 

He thinks of all the nights he left Steve home, sick and alone, so he could go out with some gal or head to the pub with his other pals from work. Had every one of those nights been like this one? Steve, just lying through his teeth to get Bucky out of his hair, and then slipping some strange man into their bedroom as soon as Bucky was out the door?

Bucky bends over and puts his head between his knees, sure that he’s going to retch.

He doesn’t, somehow. After a while he stands and leans his forehead against the cold brick wall, closing his eyes and trying to settle his mind. He counts to one hundred, and then counts to one hundred again. He’s over one thousand before he gives up, realizing it’s no use. 

He will just have to pretend he never saw. That he doesn’t know. He can’t tell Steve, can’t ask what the hell he thinks he’s doing. 

Maybe he’ll just never leave Steve alone for the night again. If he’s sick, Bucky will stay home with him, and Steve simply won’t have the chance. Steve can’t do this. Steve can’t be this way. 

And neither can he. 

Through the noise in his head, Bucky hears heavy footsteps approaching. A glass bottle rolls down the alley, coming to a stop against the toe of his boot. 

Bucky opens his eyes and turns, ready to tell whoever it is to scram. 

The words never come. 

The man from upstairs stands a few feet away. If Bucky hadn’t seen him actually engaged in the act shortly before, he’d never guess that he was of the sort. He doesn’t look like the boys prowling the docks, or the more slight and feminine fellas who frequent the more illicit clubs in the neighborhood that everyone knows about yet no one mentions.

His dress is clearly working class, and the breast pocket of his shirt advertises his profession as an electrician as well as his name, Giancarlo. The shirt hangs open, his white undershirt and suspenders visible underneath. He must not have far to walk, if he hasn’t bothered making himself look more presentable. 

Bucky recalls him now – remembers the landlord sending him in two or three months back to fix the faulty wiring of the ceiling light in the kitchen. Steve gave him a glass of water, exchanged a few polite words, but Bucky doesn’t recollect anything amiss. If they’d been eyeing one another, _wanting_ one another then, Bucky had been completely blind to it. If they already knew one another intimately, it certainly didn’t show.

Bucky stares at him, waiting for him to say something – or if words aren’t his way, to throw a punch. Bucky had been outright watching them, after all, and he probably deserves to get hit. 

The man – Giancarlo, he reminds himself – steps forward and Bucky tenses, but manages not to take a cowardly step back. 

He’s given a small, knowing smile for his efforts.

“ _What._ ” Bucky growls when Giancarlo doesn’t do or say anything more. 

“You’re the roommate, yeah?” He finally asks. There’s a slight trace of an Italian accent in his voice; he’s Brooklyn born and bred, but Bucky guesses he’s first-generation on American soil. 

“I don’t just go walking into other people’s bedrooms for kicks, if that’s what you’re asking,” Bucky replies roughly. Giancarlo closes the remaining gap between them, leaving mere inches between their faces. He smells of sweat and sex.

“He talks about you.”

“I _am_ his best friend,” Bucky retorts, though he doesn’t know what that’s worth now. Seems he doesn’t know Steve as well as he thought. He doesn’t know _himself_ as well as he thought. 

Giancarlo puts a hand on Bucky’s waist. Bucky inhales, nearly forgets to breathe out. 

“I licked him clean. I can still taste him.” 

Bucky’s gaze ticks down to his full lips and that’s apparently enough permission. Giancarlo presses him against the brick wall and kisses him. Bucky lets him do it, lets his mouth fall open; he tastes Steve’s come faintly on the other man’s tongue, too bitter and musky to be anything but that. 

“Oh christ, oh fuck,” Bucky curses, closing his eyes against the onslaught of sensation as he remembers he should pull away. He yanks his head back too quickly and with too much force, and his skull connects with the unforgiving brick. Giancarlo’s mouth just finds his neck instead, licking and sucking away the sweat gathering on his skin. He rocks their hips together, purposely pressing his hardness against Bucky’s obvious erection. 

“That still tastes of him too,” he breathes into Bucky’s ear and takes Bucky’s hand, guides it between his legs. 

And Bucky knows he shouldn’t, knows he’s going to hell as sure as anything, but he can’t stop himself.

He follows Giancarlo further down the alley, where the shadows turn to complete darkness. 

On his knees like a beggar, he sucks the other man dry as he spends himself over wet concrete and garbage, gasping Steve’s name as he comes.

*******

Three weeks go by before Steve tries to duck out of a planned double date. He does look genuinely run down, but then again, Bucky had thought him true before. Honest, honorable Steve might just be quite the actor.

Or maybe Bucky’s a fool, and this has been staring him in the face the whole time, obvious as anything and he didn’t want to see it. Steve’s never been a very good liar. 

Truly ill or merely pretending, it makes no difference. Bucky cancels the outing and stays home. Setting Steve up with yet another girl seems even more pointless now that he knows where Steve’s desires lie, even if he can’t come out and say that to Steve. If Steve had wanted him to know, he would have told him, and that hurts just as much as anything.

It takes another month before Steve’s had enough of Bucky’s homebody routine. Over the weeks, he moves from annoyed to angry to suspicious before outright demanding that Bucky leave him behind and go enjoy his date, for chrissakes. 

Steve _says_ he feels guilty every time Bucky passes up a night out in favor of staying in. He _says_ he hates dragging Bucky down. He _says_ that he can take care of himself and what would really make him feel better was if Bucky stopped acting like his damn nursemaid. 

Reluctantly, Bucky leaves. He takes a table at the diner across the street and watches their building like some kinda copper on a stakeout. He drinks enough stale coffee to set his heart racing. 

Giancarlo is in their apartment for three hours. Bucky can only imagine what that man and Steve could get up to in that length of time. 

In the alley afterward, Giancarlo jacks him to completion as he recounts exactly how he bent Steve over the kitchen table and took him near soon as he got in the door. How it’d been too long, and he’d wanted him too much. How Steve was wet and prepped already and he slid right in, yet Steve was still a bit too tight and felt so hot as he clenched real nice around his cock. His words are a hot breath in Bucky’s ear as he tells how he exploded all over Steve’s back and ass, then shoved back inside and kept on fucking Steve until he spilled on the table. 

The table where the two of them eat breakfast every morning, sitting across from one another over a shared plate of toast. Bucky will never be able to eat there again without imagining Steve stripped naked and pressed against the battered oak surface, his come streaked all over the wood. 

He feels so angry, but he’s not sure if he’s angrier with Steve or Steve’s lover or himself. 

He looks at his still half-hard dick, lying damp against the fabric of his trousers, and nearly gags over the swell of shame rising within him. What would Steve think of him, here in the dark, begging for his leftovers? 

Bucky stands silent and stupid, trying to catch his breath as Giancarlo wipes his hand clean on his handkerchief. Bucky wonders how his nice Italian mamma would feel if she knew that’s what her embroidered handiwork is being used for – cleaning spunk from her young son’s fingers in some dank back alley in Vinegar Hill. 

Despite his shame, Bucky still feels unsatisfied. He doubts anything will ever fulfill this gnawing need inside of him. Only Steve could do that, and Steve isn’t his to have.

He looks at Giancarlo, really _looks_ , desperate to understand. Steve is taking the risk for this man, not Bucky. He’s kept this all from Bucky, meaning Steve doesn’t trust him and certainly doesn’t desire him. Bucky wants to know how it all started. He wants to know if Steve made the first move, or if Giancarlo was the one who did it. He wants to know if it’s merely sex or if it’s more. He wants to know if they talk like he and Steve talk, if they ever share more of their lives than just a bed. He doesn’t ask the questions he really wants to ask.

“So, that’s nice and all, what’d you do for the other two hours and fifty-five minutes?” He grunts instead. The taunt earns him nothing but an amused smirk, a challenging lift of the brow.

Giancarlo sets his hands firmly on Bucky’s hips, fingers toying at the snaps of his suspenders. They’re the only things keeping his unzipped trousers at his waist. Giancarlo unlatches them slowly and pushes both his pants and boxers down just above Bucky’s knees.

“Turn around and I’ll show you.”

*******

It turns out that Giancarlo is not the only one, and that makes it worse.

Bucky doesn’t watch them all, and he doesn’t manage to take them all down the alleyway. 

There’s a stout, ginger-haired fella with an Irish accent that lays Steve out on the bed and spoons him from behind. Scissors his legs apart and cradles Steve in his bulky arms as he fucks him. Steve is not quite on his back, not quite fully on his side, lolling in the man’s embrace with his slender arm around the man’s pale shoulders.

It takes a while for Steve to thicken and lengthen, but then the angle of this one’s cock must hit _just so_ because Steve is suddenly panting and moaning more loudly than Bucky’s heard before, gasping like he’s surprised about how good he feels. His cock fills to near double the length, delicate skin stretched taut. He still can’t believe how big Steve gets, how hard. Bucky wants to touch it. Wants to feel it swell and throb against his hand. 

Steve loses control with no warning, his orgasm punching out of him and coating his abs in messy white globs. His partner finishes between his thighs, jerking himself over and into Steve’s twitching hole. 

That guy can’t get it up again, but he’s willing to suck Bucky’s dick. He’s sloppy with spit but he can take Bucky down his throat, which is right where Bucky comes. 

He begins having a hard time looking Steve in the eye when they’re alone together. He climbs into bed beside Steve late at night only after Steve’s drifted off. Bucky sleeps fitfully, terrified that he’ll betray himself in his slumber and wake up pressed tightly to Steve. He makes sure to wake long before Steve and take care of his morning erection quietly in the bathroom before Steve stirs. 

Steve starts asking if he’s done something wrong to make Bucky upset, and Bucky doesn’t know how to answer.

*******

A sailor, one with a tattoo reading _Mary_ in delicately curling letters over his bicep, takes Steve on his knees, pushing Steve’s face harshly into the mattress. Bucky can’t see much during that encounter, the bedroom door mostly closed and Steve facing away, but he comes home to find Steve tightening the hospital corners of clean sheets on the bed, blaming the need for the change on night sweats.

He walks around the apartment with a hitch in his step for the next two days and swears it’s just because his aching joints are bothering him more than usual due to the recent rain.

Bucky starts taking on longer hours at work, and Steve gets stubborn with the questions. Things are different between them now, strained, and Bucky can’t offer him an explanation. He hates that Steve is worrying. Bucky has twisted their friendship into this strange, dangerous thing without Steve’s knowledge or consent. 

He should stop before it’s too late, but as long as Steve keeps bringing men home, Bucky can’t.

*******

The late summer heat is sweltering when Markos Christopoulos, the owner of a corner store about two blocks over, gets Steve to ride him. Markos is about ten years older than them, a widower with a two-year-old son who spends most of the time at his grandmother’s place. That circumstance apparently allows Markos the freedom to do shit like fuck the neighbor boy in the middle of a Saturday afternoon.

Bucky’s supposed to be down at McCarren Pool for a swim with Dorothy Carver and Steve’s supposed to be recuperating from a summer cold. They’re both damn liars. 

Steve’s blonde hair is darkened with sweat and he’s breathing so hard he’s practically on the edge of an asthma attack, but he’s so unbelievably gorgeous as he takes it. It’s the first time Bucky can’t stop himself from coming as he watches. He bites down on his own fist to muffle his choked off groan and his teeth actually break skin. 

The mess in his trousers is wet and sticky but no longer warm when he follows Markos back to work where the out to lunch sign is still flipped in the window. Cornering him in the tiny, stuffy stock room, Bucky asks him how his visit with Steve went. It’s telling that no one has yet to get scared when he does this. No one worries that Bucky’s there for blackmail or a beat down. They somehow know from the desperate look on his face that there’s only one thing he wants. 

It’s dusty and so hot he can barely breathe as Markos licks him clean and then dirties him further, bending him over a packed crate of recently delivered Octagon laundry soap and screwing him with that same thin, curving dick that Steve bounced on not half an hour before. 

Bucky leaves with splinters in his hands, a pleasant ache in his ass, and hot tears burning in his eyes.

*******

It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes Steve doesn’t make it to the bedroom. Once, Bucky walks in on Steve precariously balanced on the back of the couch, legs up in the air and his toes curling in pleasure, his blonde-haired lover holding him by the hips to keep him from falling.

The only reason Bucky doesn’t get caught smack jawed in the doorway is because Steve is being so vigorously fucked, his eyes have rolled back into his head. 

After that, Bucky listens at the door for a good long while before letting himself in.

*******

It’s the end of autumn when Gerald MacAuley and Arthur Callaghan show up. Bucky knows them well from their days at school, those two near as inseparable as he and Steve had been. Unlike him and Steve, they look like they could be brothers – same height, the same build, and the same gentlemanly good looks. They both could no doubt be mistaken for Gary Cooper. Gerry’s always had more success with the ladies due to his overwhelming natural charm, but Art was good enough at baseball to play in the majors for a split second before his knee blew out and benched him the rest of the season. Since eking out that near-fame sob story, he’s been a bit luckier in love.

Bucky very nearly calls out to them before they go inside the apartment building, the thought not even occurring to him until it’s almost too late that they’re there to use Steve just like all the others. If he’d acted one moment sooner, he might have found himself down at the pub sharing a pint with two men who had just been planning on sharing his best friend. 

But he hadn’t, so he’s left playing Peeping Tom as Steve sits on Gerry’s lap, leaning his back against Gerry’s scarred chest. He and Bucky had broken up one of Steve’s fist fights, had to have been just after they’d turned seventeen; a goon had pulled a knife and left two long slashes as permanent reminders on Gerry’s skin before they got Steve away and clear. Steve had been too angry to speak to Gerry for days after that, and he didn’t talk to Bucky for a week.

Bucky wonders how long this has been going on. When Gerry had thrown himself in harm’s way for Steve, had it been for a friend, or for a lover? Has it been the two of them, Gerry and Art, or have they always been a three and Bucky’s just the oblivious odd man out?

Steve moans prettily as Gerry thrusts up into him and Art buries his face between Steve’s legs, blocking Bucky’s view of the action. As soon as Gerry empties inside Steve with an animalistic grunt, Art turns Steve over, pushing an airy sigh from Steve’s lips as he seamlessly slides in to take Gerry’s place. 

“Your knee okay?” After awhile Steve breaks from kissing and licking those jagged knife marks on Gerry’s chest, glancing back over his shoulder. Art chuckles at Steve’s concern and fucks him all the harder for it.

“It’s feelin’ fine, Stevie.” 

Bucky doesn’t stop them when they leave. If they knew, they’d surely tell Steve what he’s been doing. They’d feel obligated to let Steve know his best friend is an even bigger pervert than any of them are.

Of course, it’s not only Art and Gerry he avoids. There are others who Bucky knows better than to stop on their way out. And there are some he _thinks_ will be amenable who give him a weird look, purposely side step his veiled come on, and go on their own way. One man, whose tongue had been deep in Steve’s hole not twenty minutes earlier, spits in his face and calls him horrible names; a solid right hook and Bucky hits the ground, and wisely stays there. 

He tells Steve that he got hit defending some girl’s honor and tries not to fall apart when Steve smiles proudly, pats him on the back and hopes that the other guy got what he deserved. 

Word must get around town because some men linger at the top of the alley, or seek Bucky out before he even dares to say a word. He considers changing his M.O., changing his location, because all it would take is one cop catching wind of his behavior and he’d be in the paddy wagon in no time, but he doesn’t. 

Bucky Barnes _is_ that guy now, lurking around and waiting for Steve Rogers’ sloppy seconds. He deserves whatever he gets.

*******

In winter, Giancarlo makes another appearance, and with the turn in weather comes the baths. He doubts this is Steve’s first time, but it’s certainly Bucky’s, and he doesn’t know how it all works. The first time Bucky tries to follow, he’s turned away for lack of proper funds. He scrounges enough to be prepared when the opportunity next arises.

Once inside, he loses Steve and Giancarlo amongst the maze of steam rooms and cubicles, pools and showers; he’s distracted and frankly terrified by the casualness of the sex, the sheer _amount_ of it going on. He’s been in a brothel and that hadn’t been near as brazen as this. There, common areas were for socializing, drinking, perhaps a little kissing and light petting; sex was for the private rooms. But here, even the men who are just lying about, lay about naked and completely fucked out, having rambling conversations with previous partners and future partners and whoever else may happen by. Two men can go from kissing to fucking without changing locales, and a pair of men can become a threesome, a foursome, if just the right look is exchanged.

Any delusions Bucky has ever had of being an experienced man of the world have been slowly whittled away over the past months, and they’re all gone now. 

There’s a young kid, can’t be more than eighteen, who is letting man after man have him, a line forming to take the next turn. He’s small and blonde like Steve, and for a moment Bucky actually thought it might have been. If Steve’s ever done that…

Part of him is excited by the idea, while the other part rages with jealousy and fear. 

He watches until the kid is sloppy with come dripping down his thighs, and his own erection is pushing indecently from beneath the white towel cinched around his waist. An older gentleman, vaguely handsome and slightly overweight, stops by Bucky’s side and offers to ease his arousal, his hand gently moving to Bucky’s thigh. His finger brushes the tip of Bucky’s cock. Bucky shakes his head and moves on before anyone else notices and offers him help or worse, a place in line.

He finds Steve and Giancarlo in a steam room only by accident, by chance. Giancarlo lounges on one of the ledges, legs lazily spread wide apart. Steve’s head is bobbing quickly between his thighs, thoroughly working over Giancarlo’s length with his mouth. It has to be uncomfortable, Steve’s bony knees unpadded against the hard tile, but no one offers him a towel to cushion his position. 

Another man approaches, a possessive hand smoothing over Steve’s lower back, and he murmurs something to Giancarlo. Giancarlo’s reply causes the man to glance toward Bucky; then he walks over. 

“Guy says that the little one’s yours and I need to ask your permission.”

“Excuse me?” Bucky’s mouth is dry from the steam and he’s choking on the words. He sends a panicked look Giancarlo’s way but he’s holding Steve’s head now, fucking up into his mouth. Steve just takes it, his own cock twitching between his legs whenever he gags. 

Giancarlo puts a hand at Steve’s neck, swearing softly to himself.

“Fuck, can feel my cock in your throat,” he groans, and Steve answers with one of his own, swallowing him down even further. Giancarlo knows Bucky’s watching and he’s putting on a show as sure as anything.

The man just nods back over his shoulder toward Steve, question implied. 

“I…yes. If he wants you to.”

Bucky gives in and starts touching himself as the man rubs his hard on between Steve’s cheeks. What starts as a suggestion, a chance for Steve to say no, quickly turns into a tease when Steve offers no resistance. He pushes in, just the tip, and pulls back out, again and then again. 

Bucky wants to be the one doing it. He wants his cock inside Steve’s body, to make him whine and beg and plead for it. 

He sits down close enough that all Steve would have to do is turn his head and look over to see him. Bucky almost wants him to. He loosens his towel and opens his legs, his erection unflagging as it stands between his thighs. It’s a clear invitation and he doesn’t care who takes it. 

His partner is just a warm, wet heat around his cock as he watches Steve be taken at both ends. When the first man finishes, another steps up. This one doesn’t ask for Bucky’s permission, just looks to Giancarlo for the nod. His cock isn't all that long but it's thick, and he pushes in too hard and too fast. Steve gasps and reaches back with a shaky hand to the man’s thigh to slow him down. Bucky’s whole body tenses, ready to jump up and pull the man away. 

Steve rests his head against Giancarlo’s thigh and hisses out a long breath, adjusting to the stretch. After a moment, he pushes his hips back to signal his readiness and then puts his hands and mouth back on Giancarlo, tongue licking lower to touch the thin, sensitive skin behind his balls. 

When a third stranger is the one to make Steve finally come, Bucky echoes him, matching him thrust for thrust until Steve shoots his load onto the dingy tile between his knees. Distantly, Bucky feels a warm splash over his ankles and feet and realizes his partner has done the same. He hates how much he does not care about this other man’s pleasure. He could be anyone; he’s no one to him if he’s not Steve. 

Urged on by Steve’s orgasm, Giancarlo pulls out and jerks his release over Steve’s face. The come is still dripping from Steve’s chin when Bucky scrambles up and blindly fumbles down the halls until he finds the showers. 

_This has to be the last time_ , he thinks. _I can’t do this anymore, I can’t._

Except he knows he will.

*******

Bucky’s down on his knees in a puddle of rainwater for Johnny, a kid from Steve’s art class down at Cooper Union, when he realizes the taste of his cock is all wrong.

“Did you wash up?” Bucky scowls, as if Johnny should have known that Steve’s crazy roommate was going to beg to suck him off in the alley afterward and that he wanted to taste Steve on his skin.

Johnny’s eyebrows knit in confusion, and he shakes his head. His damp hair sprays water down into Bucky’s eyes. 

“No…I…” He looks down at Bucky, the realization dawning on his face. He almost seems disappointed. “Oh, you want _him_.”

Bucky doesn’t reply. He’s never said it out loud.

Johnny struggles to shove the clinging fabric of his damp trousers further down, and then turns around and braces himself against the wall. He uses one hand to part his cheeks, revealing his puffy, abused hole to Bucky’s gaze. 

Bucky throbs with want even as his stomach clenches. Steve’s never done it this way before and he doesn’t know how to take it, what it means. 

Bucky’s mouth is on Johnny before he even considers what he’s doing, his tongue plunging in and lapping up what’s left of Steve’s climax. He groans as he swallows, his cock excitedly pulsing.

“Can I fuck you like he fucked you?” Bucky stands and presses against Johnny’s tall, lanky body, rubs his erection against his lower back. His shirttails are still relatively dry, but the rest of his dress shirt is soaked through from the rain and sticks to his shoulder blades like a second skin. Bucky’s own clothes are sopping wet by now but it doesn’t much matter. 

Johnny glances toward the street. It’s near midnight and it’s still drizzling, the sidewalks empty. They’re well hidden, far away from prying eyes in neighbors’ windows. He nods.

It happens far too fast and Bucky’s reeling when it’s over. It’s tighter and drier than being with a woman, but knowing Steve has just done the same thing to Johnny makes Bucky finish embarrassingly quickly. 

Johnny fastens his trousers for him with a pitying look and leans in for a short kiss, nipping Bucky’s bottom lip just this side of too hard. 

“That’s not how he fucked me.” He says and then turns on his heel and walks away, leaving Bucky wet and pathetic and alone beneath the dripping fire escape.

*******

Steve makes a new friend.

Stubborn git that Steve is, he goes to some show up in Harlem all alone. Slight little white boy stands out in that neighborhood, sufficed to say, and all it took was one person rubbed the wrong way by his presence and Steve earned himself a big old black eye and a split lip. 

But the night’s outing also brings him Isaiah, because leave it to Steve to make an already challenging situation doubly so. 

Bucky should only blame himself; he and Steve barely speak these days, Bucky too wracked with guilt to handle being in the same room for longer than necessary. He wants to be with Steve so badly it makes him feel ill; knowing he shouldn’t, that he can’t, makes him even more so. The only thing he’s ever had that’s worth having was Steve’s friendship and he’s _ruined_ it. 

So of course Steve finds another friend to wile the hours away with. Steve actually has him over to the apartment when Bucky’s there, introduces him like he’s someone who’ll be sticking around. They sit in the kitchen and drink beer and play cards and Steve laughs like he hasn’t laughed in ages. He’s different than all the others, which only makes Bucky despise him more. 

Isaiah knows all the new poets, owns all the best books, can play music on guitar _and_ piano _and_ trumpet; he can do all sorts of things. He likes Steve’s art – and he actually _knows_ art, so his opinion matters. He’s got a business degree from Howard and his own electronic appliance store on Broadway near 148th. He gets Steve a new wireless to listen to the ball games and somehow convinces Steve to accept it as a gift; he won’t take a dime.

To top it all off, he’s handsome too – tall and strapping, with perfect, dark skin and warm brown eyes, and a wide, inviting smile. He and Steve must look beautiful when they fuck.

He never actually sees the Isaiah and Steve together, not like _that_. It’s safe to assume that’s only because they’re being incredibly careful. Two men caught together results in a harsh penalty; two men of different races caught together would bring a punishment that Bucky doesn’t even want to think about. 

But Steve looks at Isaiah like he’s in love. Not that Bucky really knows what love looks like anymore. He just knows he wants Steve to look at _him_ like that.

They sit too close, they touch too often, and they spend too much time in one another’s company. No other men visit Steve anymore; he makes no excuses to stay home alone. He hardly needs to, since Bucky and him going out on double dates is a thing of the past. 

He and Bucky, flat out, seem to be a thing of the past.

*******

On the first day of spring, Bucky tells Steve that he’s moving out. It seems like a good day for new beginnings. He plays it as casually as he can, but it’s no use.

Steve stares at him for a long time, a million different emotions flashing behind those blue eyes. 

“Guess this is what the end of the line looks like, then.” He says brokenly, grabbing his coat from the kitchen chair and pulling it on, evidently deciding just then that he has somewhere else to be. He pauses as he opens to the door to leave. “Do me a favor, Buck, and someday let me know what it is I did to finally make you hate me.”

“I don’t hate you,” Bucky replies quickly, eyes snapping up from where he’d been staring at the table.

Steve frowns, and for a moment Bucky thinks Steve’s going to fight him on this. But Steve’s already been fighting him for months, stubbornly trying to save the friendship that Bucky has long since destroyed. 

Steve looks away and wipes his eyes, biting his lip as if holding back words. When he speaks, he’s walking away.

“Right. Leave your key in the mailbox when you go.” The door closes behind him with utter finality.

*******

It’s Steve’s birthday when Bucky runs into Giancarlo. It may be coincidence or it may be fate, but either way Bucky is beyond drunk and far too lonely to bear another night.

“You going to see Steve later?” Bucky runs his finger around the mouth of his beer bottle, eyeing Giancarlo. The bar is noisy with raucous celebration, swirling with life, and Bucky feels dead inside. 

Giancarlo takes a sip of his own beer, mouth moving purposefully and his throat bobbing. His eyes stay fast on Bucky the whole time. When he finishes drinking, he moves his bar stool closer to Bucky’s, knees knocking. He lowers his voice real quiet. 

“Haven’t seen Steve in months, same as you. That black fella must have a magic dick or something.”

Bucky snorts bitterly. Giancarlo moves his knee against Bucky’s again. 

“You know, you could’ve had him at anytime if you’d just said the word.” 

“To who? To you? Forgive me if I don’t want you to pass him to me like you pass him around at the baths.”

“No, not to me,” Giancarlo says, not taking offense at Bucky’s harsh tone. “To him.”

“Right. And if wishes were fishes…” Bucky finishes his beer and thunks the empty down on the bar top. He meets Giancarlo’s gaze head on. “What do you say, once more for old time’s sake?”

They could go anywhere; Brooklyn is full of anonymous, dark corners. But they’re in the alley beside his and Steve’s old place before they bother speaking again. 

“You know I haven’t been with him,” Giancarlo reminds him, hands already working on his own belt. “It’s just gonna be me you’re getting.”

“I don’t care,” Bucky lies, and sinks to his knees.

Somewhere in the distance there are fireworks going off. People are still out and about, kids throwing firecrackers and running up and down the block with sparklers. 

This is beyond reckless. 

It’s _always_ been reckless and maybe he’s wanted to get caught. Have someone else put a stop to it because he’s too weak to do it himself. 

What other reason would he have for having sex with strangers twenty feet away from being in outright public? Sure, it’s nighttime and they’re hidden in the shadows, tucked away behind the dumpster like the rest of the desperate scrounging rats, but all it takes is one person, seeing one thing and saying one word…

“Bucky?”

The man is backlit at the top of the alley, but Bucky knows that silhouette, knows that voice, better than anything else in the world.

Giancarlo refastens his pants but Bucky doesn’t move, doesn’t bother to make it look like anything other than what it is.

Steve moves closer, close enough that Bucky can see the look of shock and betrayal on his beautiful face. 

_It began as an honest mistake._

_He never meant for it to happen._

Bucky repeats that to himself like a mantra, as if he can turn a poor excuse into a valid reason if only he can say it one more time. 

But as he stares at Steve and Steve stares back, anything left between them shatters, joining the broken glass that cuts into his skin as he kneels in that back alley.

It doesn’t matter how it started. He can’t deny it’s what he’s always wanted. And now Steve knows.


	2. Chapter 2

There is a foot-long scratch just below the lock of their apartment door. 

_Steve’s_ apartment door. 

Bucky moved out months ago, but he can’t stop thinking of it as home. 

The gouge is new. It’s deep, but it’s thin, and it’s probably something that would have gone unnoticed by him if he actually still lived here. He can barely see it in the dim light, half the bulbs of the hallway fixtures either dead or flickering their way there. He most likely would’ve brushed by the damage on a daily basis, adding more dents and dings himself as he kicked the door open carelessly. 

Now he just keeps staring at it, this stupid miniscule thing that doesn’t really matter yet seems representative of everything that’s gone wrong. 

He lifts his hand to knock for about the fifth or sixth time and again doesn’t follow through. 

“Fuck,” Bucky softly curses his own cowardice. At the very least, half an hour has already passed since Steve simply turned and walked away from the sight of Bucky on his knees, about to take Giancarlo’s cock into his mouth. Steve hadn’t said another word, so Bucky was left with only the heartbreaking sound of his name falling from Steve’s lips. It’s turning over and over in his mind, an incessant echo ringing with shock and dismay and disappointment. 

He knows Steve is home, having seen the light in their – in _Steve’s_ – kitchen window before he trudged inside. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if he knocks and Steve refuses to answer, so he can’t bring himself to try. 

The sound of someone coming down the stairs jars him; Bucky startles and then twists to look, finding Mr. Henry from 5B walking onto the landing, gnarled hand curved around the bannister for support and smelling like day old cigars, as always. Bucky stumbles out of his way, deeply unsettled by the intrusion into his private tumult. The thought that life is simply going on as normal for other people seems wrong, somehow, when his own world has just irrevocably changed. 

“Locked out, young man?” Mr. Henry croaks, looking none too concerned and evidently unaware Bucky hasn’t lived here for months. Bucky just nods, unable to find his voice. Mr. Henry waves him off like he’s begging for his help. “I know the super is out of town till Tuesday, daughter out in Buffalo had a baby, you know. So you’re out of luck, I’m afraid. Best bet is to wait for that little friend of yours to get home with his key.”

He continues on his way, creaking down the next set of stairs. 

Bucky waits until the old codger is out of sight and then slides his hand along the side of the doorframe, feeling for the spare key he and Steve used to keep hidden there. With Steve being too short to reach it if they set it along the top ledge, Bucky had dug a deep notch into the woodwork to slide the key into, just about waist level. It seemed a much better hiding place than the flat rock Steve used outside at his mother’s old place. 

The key is still there, which shouldn’t be a surprise. The sister of stubbornness is predictability, and Steve is nothing if not a creature of habit.

In most things. 

Steve shocking the hell out of him was how this whole thing started, after all. And Bucky can’t predict what Steve’s going to do now that he knows Bucky’s own terrible secret. 

Bucky turns the tarnished metal in his fingers a few times before summoning the courage to put it into the lock. The fact that the bolt still sticks mid-turn and necessitates a jiggling of the doorknob is comforting. 

The apartment smells the same too; Ivory soap and turpentine, pencil shavings and eraser dust. If the place ever smelled of anything other than that, Bucky doesn’t remember it. It’s like he never brought anything of himself into his memories, as if Steve was the only thing worth remembering about his own life here. 

Steve is sitting at the kitchen table, face downturned. His hair has grown a shade too long, and in the late hour of the day a few stray wisps have fallen gently across his forehead and into his eyes. There’s a half-empty bottle of whiskey in front of him, along with a glass left with alcohol residue clinging to its sides and bottom. Steve’s got his arms folded over his stomach like he’s hugging himself, and though he doesn’t look over when Bucky comes in, his shoulders tense ever so slightly. He keeps staring down at the table, his gaze unfocused like he’s trapped in his own thoughts and not really seeing anything at all. 

“Steve.” Bucky starts. More fireworks go off outside, sounding much closer this time, and Steve glances toward the open window. He picks up the bottle of booze and pours himself another glass. Bucky just watches as he fills it more than three fingers full. It’s probably enough to put someone of Steve’s size and build firmly past sober, and it’s clearly not his first glass. 

“Happy birthday to me, huh.” Steve mumbles weakly, words slightly slurred, before picking it up, taking a long sip. He doesn’t cough or sputter the way he used to when the sharp tang hit his tongue and scalded his throat. He drinks like someone who knows how. 

“Steve.” Bucky tries again, not sure what he wants Steve to actually say in response. Maybe he just wants Steve to look at him. 

But then he does, and Bucky wishes he hadn’t. 

He hasn’t seen so much pain in Steve’s beautiful blue eyes since the day his mother passed. He’s no longer crying, but his pale cheeks are tear-stained, his long, dark eyelashes still wet.

Bucky takes a step toward him and Steve quickly looks away, a swift and silent warning not to come any closer.

He takes another drink, draining most of the glass. His elegant artist’s fingers, usually so delicate and careful, curl tightly enough around the glass that it seems he’ll break it in his grasp. 

Not knowing what else to do, Bucky goes to the cupboard and grabs a glass of his own. Steve doesn’t react as Bucky drags the bottle across the table, pours a generous helping, and then slides the bottle back within Steve’s reach. Bucky thinks about sitting down but it seems too close, too much like pushing his luck. He goes back to where he’d been standing at the edge of the kitchen.

“Steve…whatever it is you’re thinking, I…”

“You don’t know what I’m thinking,” Steve interrupts quietly. He doesn’t snap; he just sounds tired and sad. Bucky sighs.

“You’re right, I don’t,” Bucky looks down at the amber liquid in his glass, considering. “But _whatever_ it is that you _are_ thinking, I can promise you…it’s worse than that.” 

Steve finishes what’s left in his own glass and pours himself more, his hand shaking a little now. He sniffs lightly, rubs his nose.

“You know about me, don’t you.” Steve doesn’t phrase it as a question. He might have, had that man in the alley had been anyone but Giancarlo, but it _was_ Giancarlo and Steve’s not a fool. “You’ve known for awhile.” Bucky can only nod, and Steve nods back more slowly, as if all the pieces are finally coming together. 

“That’s why you left.” Again, it’s not a question, but this time Bucky is sure that Steve is getting it wrong, reading the evidence in the entirely wrong light. Bucky wants desperately to correct him but it’s too much to properly explain before Steve continues. “If you’re so disgusted with who I am…I don’t understand why you’re down an alley with Dominic.”

“Dominic?” Bucky’s confusion is real, but Steve takes it as an act and scoffs at him annoyance, temper flaring. 

“I can’t believe he’s someone you just picked randomly; you _know_ who he is.”

“I…I do, I know who he is…to you…” Bucky still has a hard time acknowledging it. Before Isaiah, Giancarlo – _Dominic?_ – was the closest thing Steve had to a regular fella and he hates that. “I just thought his name was…” He thinks back, tries to remember the shirt _Dominic_ had been wearing the night they’d first met. “Y’know, it doesn’t matter what I thought.” He trails off.

Bucky’s sure what the name stitched into the uniform had been, remembers it plain as day, but he supposes the man easily could have been wearing someone else’s shirt. Bucky had just never considered that possibility at the time. 

It’s not like they ever introduced themselves. Dominic, if that’s really who he is, never called him by name either. If he even knows it, it’s certainly not because Bucky told him. 

“So what were you going to do?” Steve asks, looking up at him challengingly, a spark of fire in his eyes. “Lure him in and then beat him when his pants were down around his ankles?” 

“What? Christ, no! Steve, you think I would…” Bucky bolts upright and instinctively moves toward Steve; he’s alarmed that Steve would ever think such a thing of him. Steve shifts away, feet of his chair shrieking loudly against the tile. “Who do you think I am?”

“I don’t know who you are. Not anymore.”

It terrifies Bucky that he can no longer tell if Steve really means that. He takes a moment and tries to figure out what to say, because nothing he’s coming up with in response seems right. He finally settles on agreement, because it seems to get closest to the truth. 

“I don’t know who I am either.” Holding his drink in left hand, Bucky moves to the side of the table and sets his right hand on the chair back opposite Steve. 

“You’re not like me.” Steve is running his thumb nervously up and down through the condensation pearling on the outside of his glass, and he sounds strange. Angry and accusatory while at the same time his voice is small with shame. 

“I’m…I’m not _not_ like you,” Bucky replies, frustrated. Steve clearly yet believes that whatever this is, it’s not about what Bucky desires. After all, until tonight Steve has only seen him pursue women. He’s under the misimpression that Bucky moved out and ended their friendship because he discovered Steve’s predilections and disapproved. He still has no idea what Bucky’s really been up to. 

“Listen. I need to explain…Gian – Dominic and I, we’ve been together before this. Before tonight.” Steve’s eyes snap to meet his, surprised. “And he, well, he hasn’t been the only one, Steve. I’ve…There’s been so many and they’ve…God, _how do I say this._ ” 

Bucky turns away and drags his fingers viciously through his hair, exasperated with himself. He paces toward the door but then back, knowing he’s just got to say it. Say it, and have it done and over with. He no longer has anything left to lose.

“They’ve been yours first, Steve. All of them.”

Bucky looks down at Steve, who blinks back at him in bewilderment. Bucky takes a deep breath and delivers the final blow. The words catch in his throat and he realizes he’s on the verge of tears. 

“And I know…I know that they were yours because I watched you with them.” 

The liquor bottle knocks over with a loud clatter, Steve’s knees hitting wood when he clumsily clambers up, backing away from the table like he needs to put as much space between himself and Bucky as possible. What’s left of the whiskey pools across the wood, racing in rivulets through the gouges in its battered surface.

The way Steve looks at him…Bucky had thought nothing could hurt more than the way Steve looked when he first came in, but he was wrong. This is so much worse.

They stand there in silence as the liquid runs over the beveled edge and drips to the kitchen tile.

And then Steve leaves. _Runs._

The sound of the door closing breaks something within him. Bucky sinks to the ground, his legs suddenly unable to support the unbearable weight. The tears that he feels like he’s been holding back since the first night he saw Steve with another man finally overwhelm him. 

His heart had broken then. He’s merely been mutilating himself with its jagged pieces ever since. Now there’s nothing left to do but sit here alone and bleed out over the kitchen floor.

*******

Bucky wakes abruptly, morning light cruelly jarring him from slumber. He jolts like he’s been hit, flinging an arm out to protect himself from Lord knows what. His head is pounding, his skull feeling too small for all the throbbing matter inside. His throat and mouth are dry and scratchy and his back is so stiff that his spine actually hurts as he struggles to sit up from the sunken cushions of the couch.

“Steve?” He still manages to mumble, hoping that he’s come home in the few hours since Bucky fell asleep. 

“Nope.” Comes a deep voice to his left. 

His neck twinges as he turns his head toward the sound. He’s wincing in adjustment to the sunlight and his eyelashes are practically stuck together with remnants of sleep, but he makes out enough of a shape to determine it’s most definitely _not_ Steve sitting in the armchair.

Isaiah is leaning forward, elbows on his knees and his hands folded in front of him, as if he’s just been patiently sitting here for god knows how long, waiting for Bucky to wake of his own volition. 

“Where is Steve? What are you doing here?” Those are the words he means to say, but it sounds far more garbled. He scrambles to sit up fully but he gets tangled in the blanket. Blanket? He passed out here without thought for comfort, he didn’t…

He shoves it off his body and onto the floor, realizing that the only person who could have given him cover was Isaiah. 

“How’d you even get in here?” Bucky manages English this time. 

“I have a key.”

“Of course you do,” Bucky mumbles to himself, turning and getting both his feet flat on the ground. He’d fallen asleep with his shoes on. He combs his fingers through his hair and immediately can tell it’s an unsalvageable mess. His clothes are in rumpled disarray and he positively reeks of booze, and it tastes like something died in his mouth. Everything hurts, and he doesn’t mean just physically.

Isaiah is watching him with a subdued but nevertheless judgmental gaze. He doesn’t say anything, just _looks_ at him in this way like he knows Bucky’s a worthless and terrible excuse for a human being, and it makes Bucky so hopelessly _angry_.

He shoves off the couch and goes to the kitchen to fetch a glass of water, if only to get away from the man. 

Isaiah merely leans back in his seat, places his hands calmly on his knees. His eyes never leave Bucky, studying him as he downs a full glass and fills himself another from the tap. 

“Is Steve all right?” Bucky finally asks, deciding that if Isaiah is here, Bucky may as well find out what he wants to know, if he can. 

“No.” Isaiah answers simply. 

“Fuck.” Bucky’s shoulders slump and he sets his half-empty glass onto the countertop, leaving it behind and returning to the living room. 

“So, I’m supposing that you’re the one who can tell me why he showed up at my doorstep at two in the morning without so much as a jacket after having walked all the way from 14th and 7th?” 

“Why in all that’s holy did he _walk_ all the way…?” Bucky starts, mind filling with images of Steve, all alone in the middle of the night, walking near the length of Manhattan to get to Isaiah when the Broadway line stops at 145th, damn near dropping him at Isaiah’s front door. That’s dangerous in so many ways – his health, his safety…

“Fire on the tracks somewhere between here and there.”

“He could’ve taken the 8th Avenue line at least, and –”

“Well he didn’t want to wait for another train so the stubborn fool walked. Feet blistered to bloody, and he didn’t even notice. Are you gonna tell me why that is?”

“ _He_ didn’t tell you?” Bucky is genuinely surprised. First that Steve didn’t say, and secondly that Isaiah didn’t _make_ him say. Not that anyone can force Steve to do anything he doesn’t want to do, but if it had been him, if Steve had shown up like that in the middle of the night, so clearly upset…

But it hadn’t been him. He’d just been the one to cause it. 

“He did not. I could only assume it has something to do with you because it usually does, and pal, seeing the state that you’re in, I see I was right.”

“I’m not your pal.”

“No, you certainly aren’t.” Isaiah doesn’t mince words. “But Steve is.”

“Right.” Bucky laughs bitterly to himself; Steve and Isaiah are far more than _pals_ , and all this does is remind him of how much so. “Best of _friends_ , you two are. At least tell me this, promise me – _promise_ me you love him as much as he loves you. I could almost bear it if I knew that.”

The expression on Isaiah’s face is unreadable for a brief moment and then he smiles like Bucky’s said the funniest thing he’s ever heard, a mouthful perfect, straight white teeth that Bucky wants to punch in. 

“There’s a glaring fault in your logic. You’re assuming that Steve loves me at all.” 

He raises his eyebrows at Bucky’s bewildered silence. He’s not amused, not exactly, because even Bucky can tell he wishes his statement weren’t true. Which almost makes Bucky believe that it _is_ true. 

“Whatever you did…make it right.” Isaiah stands up, his tone brooking no argument. Like it’s that simple a task to accomplish. 

“I don’t know how.”

“Well, I’ll have Steve back home by dinnertime, so you best figure it out.” 

“What if I can’t?” Bucky looks up at him, wanting him to somehow have the answer, to somehow help him fix the mess he’s made. Isaiah shakes his head, refusing Bucky’s doubt outright. 

“You can. You have to.”

Isaiah pauses on his way out, claps his hand briefly on Bucky’s shoulder. It’s a reluctant reassurance.

Feeling a sudden surge of compassion for this man – this _good_ man – Bucky reaches up and covers Isaiah’s hand with his own.

“He does love you. You don’t know him like I do.”

Isaiah’s smile is small this time, crooked and weak with sadness but ultimately honest.

“Says the man who didn’t have a clue he’s always had Steve’s heart in the first place.” Isaiah pulls his hand out from under Bucky’s and returns the gesture, patting the top of Bucky’s hand once before letting go.

*******

Steve doesn’t say anything as he takes a seat beside Bucky on the wide ledge of the roof. This used to be their spot; claimed it the first night they’d spent in this building. He’d been twenty and Steve nineteen, a mere month out from his mother’s funeral. The day they’d moved in together had been the first time Steve smiled in weeks.

Bucky swears he hears Steve’s frail bones creak as he lowers himself to sit, moving to let his legs dangle off the side in the way that never fails to make Bucky’s heart palpitate in nervous fear. Not that he’s never done it himself – hell, he’s doing it right now – but Steve being the one perched perilously over a six story fall feels different. 

The top of the building is flat and serves as a makeshift patio, as most roofs in New York do, and they could easily choose to safely sit on the folding chairs left up here by someone who long since moved out, and watch the breeze flutter Mrs. Epstein’s clothesline. The edge is where they always go though, to look down at the street below and feel bigger than this stupid world for a brief moment. 

“I saw your note.” Steve says needlessly. 

Well, perhaps not needlessly, as maybe he could’ve come up here on his own, seeking solace, and found Bucky by happenstance. Bucky kind of likes the thought that they might have had the same idea. 

But they hadn’t.

Bucky nods, coughing lightly to clear his throat. He hasn’t spoken a word to anyone since Isaiah left over ten hours ago.

“Uh…yeah. I didn’t…I didn’t think it’d be fair to wait for you inside the apartment. In case you didn’t want to see me.”

“I appreciate that,” Steve replies, and Bucky is struck by how distant and proper his voice sounds. It’s still so deep and powerful, the way no one expects to hear from someone so small, but now it’s utterly lacking in its usual warmth. “Isaiah did tell me that you’d be here. It wouldn’t have been an ambush.” 

“Still.”

Steve gives a little nod of his own, jaw settling tight. He looks out toward the Manhattan skyline, his blue eyes growing wider and darker in the fading light of the evening. The day’s heat is dropping along with the sun, but cooling sweat pulls Steve’s fair hair flat against his forehead. His collar is open, and he’s in his shirtsleeves.

“How are your feet?” Bucky asks, and Steve tilts his head to look at Bucky curiously, then down to look at his worn leather shoes. One of the shoelaces is frayed. He idly taps his heels against the cornice work of the building as he considers Bucky’s question. 

“They’re fine…”

“It’s just…I mean, Isaiah said you walked all that way last night and that you were hurt and –”

Steve snorts at that, shaking his head as a sardonic smile twinges his expression into bitterness.

“My feet are fine. This is really what you want to talk about?”

“I was just concerned, Steve.” 

Steve disregards him impatiently. 

“Isaiah said you had something to say and that I should hear you out. So maybe you should say it already.”

“Are you only here because Isaiah asked you to be here?” The question comes out despite himself, as if it really matters. Steve’s _here_ – he should be taking full advantage of every precious second, and instead he’s quibbling over the why and how of it all. Bucky could kick himself. He quickly moves on so Steve doesn’t feel the need to answer his stupidity. “Isaiah seems like a decent fella.”

“He is.” Steve agrees quietly. 

“If I were a decent fella, I would probably tell you to leave me here and go find him,” Bucky gives Steve a bitter smile of his own. “But I think it’s pretty clear after all this that I’m not that decent.”

“Nothing’s ‘pretty clear’ anymore, Bucky. This whole thing’s about as clear as mud.” Steve sighs, a bit of his anger sapping away. He rubs his hands over his knees the way he does when he’s feeling anxious. “But I _am_ here, so stop talking about Isaiah and start talking about you, and me, and you _and_ me, and –”

“I love you.” Bucky blurts abruptly, uncontrollably, an immediate and unstoppable response to the phrase _you and me_ leaving Steve’s mouth. He really needed only the slightest provocation, having been desperate to say it ever since Steve had walked out last night. It should worry him that Steve winces at the words and doesn’t so much as look at him in response, but his need for Steve to know the truth outweighs that. “I’m fucking mad about you and I’m sorry I was too chicken to say anything, and that I chose the dumbest way possible to try and feel close to you and I…I know you don’t want me and I’m so damn sorry I’ve done this to you. I’m sorry I’m this person.”

Bucky blathers all this to the side of Steve’s face, Steve’s gaze carefully focused forward and his fingers curling and uncurling in his lap as he listens to Bucky’s babble of excuses. Bucky reaches out to try and touch him but aborts the move himself, pulling his hand back before he can make contact with Steve’s shoulder. He has to bite his own lip to keep more words from spilling out, to at the very least give Steve a chance to respond to everything he just admitted. 

“I thought I saw you, once. At the baths.” Steve mumbles, and Bucky realizes from the break in his voice that Steve’s crying. Tears must be beginning to fall down his right cheek because Steve lifts a hand to quickly brush them away. “I thought…I thought I was going crazy. Fantasizing. Imagining things that couldn’t possibly be real.” Steve laughs a little to himself, shaking his head as he rubs at his eyes with his thumb. “But you were there, weren’t you?” 

Bucky nods, swallowing hard.

“Yes.” He chokes out when he realizes Steve hasn’t looked at him for a response. 

“You were there and you just…you _watched_ me, Bucky.”

Steve does look at him then and Bucky meets Steve’s stare, knowing there’s nothing he can say to that, no excuse.

“You watched me with Dominic and with those other men and…” Steve closes his eyes for a moment and then turns his body away. He moves to get up but then stops, turning back to face Bucky. “If you love me, why would you do that?”

“Because…” There’s too much to explain and it all comes tumbling out in no particular order. “Because you’re beautiful. Because they had you and I didn’t. Because they had you and I couldn’t. Because it was all I could do. Because I wanted you and I didn’t want to want you. Because it hurt like hell to see you with other men and I deserved that pain. How many reasons do you need?”

“Bucky…”

“Isaiah told me to make this right. But I don’t think there's any way to make this right between us, is there? I’ve ruined everything.”

He and Steve share a long look, Steve clearly searching for something in his gaze as the silence between them continues. Bucky tries to hold the stare, to tell Steve what he can’t properly explain, but it’s too intense to withstand. 

“I should probably go.” He glances down at his hands nervously before lifting his head once more when Steve still hasn’t replied. 

Steve’s eyes are narrowed, his lips pulling tight into a frown.

“So that’s it?” Steve’s _affronted_ all of a sudden, glaring at him with a burst of tremendous anger Bucky frankly expected a hell of a lot sooner in this conversation. “Christ, Buck, I’ve seen you fight harder for a seat at a bar.”

Steve swings his legs back onto solid ground and stands up in one swift movement. 

"Steve –" Bucky starts in surprise, reaching out to grab Steve’s wrist and stop him from walking away. 

“ _No_.” Steve rips his arm away from Bucky’s grasp and stalks toward the stairwell.

“Steve, wait, please…” Bucky catches up in a few long paces and comes up behind Steve at the access door, slamming it shut near soon as Steve opens it. 

“What?” Steve pounds his fist against the rusted metal of the door and then whirls around. Bucky brackets Steve, arms on either side of his body, close enough to almost touch but very carefully not actually doing so. It doesn’t matter, because Steve’s grabbing the front of his shirt and shaking him, his fingers twisted up tightly in the fabric just below his collar. “What the hell do you want from me? I’m _beautiful_? You _love_ me? I’m supposed to believe that?”

There’s such disdain, so much contempt, Steve spitting his own words back at him like they’re poison. 

“It’s the truth,” Bucky insists, sounding pathetic even to his own ears.

“You have a god damn funny way of showing it, Barnes.”

When the last name comes out, the gloves are off, and Bucky knows it. 

“Fuck, don’t do that.”

“All those dates, all those dames. The mere thought of you touching them, kissing them, _being with them_ the way I know you have, it made me – _makes me_ – feel sick. How could you _purposely_ watch me with other men? How could you stand it? If you felt for me an ounce of what I feel for you –”

“You feel so much for me, Rogers, why were you with them in the first place?” Bucky is conscious of the fact his voice is getting far too loud, loud enough to carry across rooftops and into neighbors’ windows. His own temper is getting the better of him now, turning this into a two-sided argument, vicious accusations and pointed barbs flying from both of them. He manages to lower to a sharp hiss when he continues. “I think at this point you’ve had every willing guy in the borough _but_ me.”

“ _I never knew I could have you!_ ” Steve shoves at him, both hands pushing hard at his chest. Bucky is stunned at the force behind the move, stumbling backward. Steve follows. “And that’s _your_ fault, not mine!” Steve pushes again. Bucky falls back another step but this time he reclaims the space immediately; he pins Steve against the door a little harder than he means to. If it hurts, Steve doesn’t show it. He looks up at Bucky like he’s expecting fists to fly. 

He still doesn't really believe a word of what Bucky’s been saying. 

Bucky forces his face to soften, his hold on Steve to relax. 

“I didn’t want this for you,” Bucky admits, lowering his voice further still to a near whisper. He’s so close to Steve now that he can see the freckles across the bridge of his nose, a sign of summertime on Steve’s fair skin. “With the others…it seemed like it was just sex. But us…god, Steve, it couldn’t have been that. I would need it to be everything and _forever_ because I can’t withstand anything else. And you deserve better than this life, better than me, and –”

“Shut the hell up.” Steve’s temper flares but it’s a different kind of anger, this time; it’s a different kind of desperation. “Just…shut up.”

Steve kisses him then, and Bucky shouldn’t be surprised. Steve’s always been the braver one between them. Bucky freezes when Steve’s lips cover his, startled, and he barely has time to wrap his mind around it before Steve’s mouth is gone. 

“No,” Bucky whispers more to himself than anything, not about to let that be _it_. He pulls Steve back to him, angling his head to kiss him deeply. Steve lets out the startled noise this time as Bucky near lifts him off his feet, but he quickly melts into it. He opens his mouth and lets Bucky in, tongue tangling with his. 

Desire _floods_ Bucky’s body, every vestige of sadness and doubt drowned in an instant. He’s spent so long imagining what this would feel like, it’s incredible to realize that it’s somehow _better_ than anything he dreamed. 

Steve smells like the city and sunbaked sweat and his lips taste salty from his tears, and Bucky wants to have him like this for the rest of his life. He dares to hope this means Steve will one day forgive him, because he wasn’t lying when he said he wouldn’t be able to stand having this any less than always. Since they were kids, he’s needed Steve like he needs the air to breathe, but this last thing between them that they’ve never done will twine Steve completely around his soul, hand him the last piece of his heart to do with as he pleases. 

“ _Steve_ ,” he gasps, and picks Steve up off the cracked cement, pressing him back against the rattling door. He gets his hands under Steve’s thighs, around his ass, and urges Steve’s legs around his waist. 

Even as Steve’s calves tighten around his hips, trying to gain purchase in a precarious position, his hands are pushing at Bucky’s shoulders, trying to create some space between them.

“Bucky…Bucky, stop. Put me down.” It takes a moment for the words to register in Bucky’s hazy head, but the second they do he quickly complies. 

“I’m sorry.” Bucky steps back, somehow both anxious and aroused, desire and fear battling with one another. Even through the panic of _Steve said stop, Steve doesn’t want this_ , he still also wants, and wants, and _wants_. He has simultaneous instincts to run toward Steve and run away, and the result is a muddle of different impulses throughout his entire body. It leaves him dizzy. 

“Don’t be sorry, I just…” Steve runs a hand over his mouth, his lips wet from Bucky’s kisses. “It’s too fast. I need a minute here.”

“Yeah. Yeah, okay,” Bucky nods, unsure what to do with himself now. 

“Maybe you should go.”

Bucky stares at Steve, the unexpected suggestion catching him off guard. He’d thought they’d turned a corner here, were going in a new direction, but maybe they haven’t. Maybe Steve’s just as angry with him now as he had been before, if not even moreso.

“If…if that’s what you want.”

“It’s not exactly what I want,” Steve admits breathlessly, leaning back against the door with a heavy sigh. “What I want isn’t very smart.” 

“Since when have you thought twice about rushing headlong into anything?” Bucky points out, earning a half-smile from Steve. It brings a small measure of relief.

“I still think you should probably go.” 

“Yeah. Okay.” 

“And tomorrow after work, you should come home.”

“Home?” Bucky repeats, hoping that Steve means what he thinks he means, but slightly scared that he’s mistaken.

“Unless Rebecca likes having you sleep in their living room, that is.” Steve smiles fully. He pushes off the door, hips first and then shoulders, practically rolling over rather than stepping and turning around to grab the doorknob. 

“The nephews love it, but Ben’s about to kick my ass to the curb, so I think she’ll be fine with the news,” Bucky replies as Steve gets the door open and steps into the stairwell. The security light on the top landing glows orange behind him, giving his blonde hair a halo. Bucky follows him inside and lets the heavy door fall shut.

He and Steve are close again in this small, dim space, the air around them still and stale and stiflingly warm. Bucky doesn’t care, and looking at the way Steve’s eyes dilate and hearing his breath hitch, he suspects Steve doesn’t either. 

“Can I come home right now?” He and Steve are already leaning toward each other, a natural, magnetic pull. 

“No,” Steve whispers, though he allows Bucky to kiss him softly, and closes his eyes when Bucky rests his forehead against his. He lets out a long, shaky exhale, his breath warm over Bucky’s cheek. Bucky feels him tremble in his arms and it hurts how much he wants to just hold Steve close. “I need some time to think.”

“And one night will be enough time to do that?” Bucky forces himself to ask, though the question runs contrary to everything he wants. 

“Probably not.”

“So, do you want me to –” He starts to draw back, but Steve’s fingers cling to his biceps, holding him fast.

“No. Tomorrow.” Steve sounds sure. Bucky ducks his head against Steve’s neck, hiding his grin. 

“All right. Tomorrow.”

*******

Bucky manages to wait until mid-day to show up at the apartment again, one box of belongings in his arms and a duffel of clothes slung over his shoulder. Steve seems genuinely happy to have him back and it feels good – _great_ even – right up until Steve yawns one time too many to go unnoticed. They’ve pointedly avoided discussing the sharing of the bed, and they continued to not talk about it even as they climbed under the sheets beside each other.

He lies in the darkness for what seems like hours, all too aware of how little space and clothing separates Steve’s body from his. They’ve both been firmly on their specific side of the mattress for about an hour now, both clearly aware the other is wide awake, but pretending otherwise. He breathes in and out in careful, measured breaths, trying to trick both himself and Steve into thinking he’s falling asleep. 

“Can I ask you a question?” 

Steve murmurs this quietly, but the room has been so silent for so long that it sounds tremendously loud. Bucky rolls onto his back; the mattress shifts under his weight. 

“Yes.” He folds his hands over his stomach and waits. Steve rolls over as well, mimicking Bucky’s position. They both stare up at the ceiling, not at each other, as Steve dithers over his words.

Steve finally saying something had provided relief for only a brief moment. Now Bucky’s just worried what this question will be and why Steve seems so reluctant to spit it out. 

“Ask it.” Bucky turns over on his side to face Steve. Rearranging his limbs and punching the lumpy pillow underneath his head in order to fluff it up makes the whole mattress bounce and squeak and the bedframe creak. “Out with it, Stevie.”

“Don’t call me that.” He tilts his head to shoot Bucky a glare, but it’s completely undercut by the way his blonde hair fans over the white pillowcase and his cheek sinks into the soft curve of the pillow itself. He looks too young and angelic for Bucky to take his ire seriously. 

“All right, _Steve_ ,” Bucky lowers his voice and frowns sternly at the name, overdramatically serious. Steve only worries his bottom lip with his teeth instead of rolling his eyes, cueing Bucky to the fact that whatever he’s about to say is going somewhere they’ve been avoiding since he tucked his socks and underwear back in the drawer below Steve’s and clinked his toothbrush next to Steve’s on the corner of the sink. 

“When was the first time?”

“The first time…?” Bucky prompts, unsure what _exactly_ Steve wants to know. There’s a lot of firsts to choose from, pretty much all of which he’s kept from Steve. 

“The first time you watched. How long ago was it?”

“Oh geez.” Bucky flops onto his back, bringing a hand up to run through his hair as he thinks on it. “It’s been…god damn…do you remember Colleen O’Reilly?”

“Course I do. You went on about her for months,” Steve snorts, and for the first time Bucky actually detects that sore note in his voice and understands it as jealousy and hurt over Bucky’s romantic attentions going elsewhere, not dejection over his own lack of luck with ladies. He wonders how he ever missed it, how he ever interpreted that sound as reluctant amusement about Bucky’s dating misadventures. 

“That night I finally went out with her…that was the night. Got sick, came home early, and…and there you were.”

“That had to be…that was _over a year ago._ ” Steve’s surprised, and Bucky wonders if this information makes it worse. One year suddenly seems like a very, very long time, considering the circumstances. He rests his forearm over his eyes, feeling too guilty to look at Steve as he continues.

“You were with Gian – Dominic. Here, in the bedroom.” _In this very bed_ , Bucky doesn’t say, though he’s thinking it, imagining it, re-living it. 

Steve makes a small murmur of acknowledgment in the back of his throat, perhaps remembering the exact occasion, perhaps not. Bucky knows he and Dominic were in bed together far more than just the once. Steve probably has scores of memories to choose from. 

“And how did he have me?” 

Bucky opens his eyes and pulls away his arm, glancing at Steve. He’s the one surprised now. Steve is still staring up at the ceiling; his long fingers are twining in the blanket, picking at the worn, pilled fabric. It’s the only sign that he might be feeling as anxious about this conversation as Bucky is.

“You really want me to…?” Bucky starts to ask and Steve nods. “He, uh…” Bucky coughs, trying to cover how his voice embarrassingly breaks. “He…he had you on…You were on your back.” He swallows around the lump in his throat and presses on. “He had your legs bent back and apart, and he was fucking you. Hard.”

“Did I come?” He sounds flat and disinterested, as if he’s merely asking after the weather. Bucky knows it’s an act, but he doesn’t understand how Steve’s managing it. Bucky’s practically shaking with nerves. 

“ _Christ_ , Steve.” Bucky tries not to scowl at him, and nearly fails. He doesn’t know what Steve’s playing at here; he doesn’t get where this is going or what might be the point. “There ever a time when you _didn’t_?”

“Sometimes.” Steve’s eyebrow gives a small quirk upward while his mouth settles in a frown, the facial equivalent of a blasé shrug.

“Well, you did.” Bucky fidgets, his skin growing warm as he remembers how Steve had shot a massive load, the splatter reaching up to his chin. “All over yourself.”

“And Dominic? Where did he come?” Steve doesn’t ask _if_ ; Bucky knows Dominic never had any issues in that regard. 

“Inside you. He came inside you. _Fuck_.” Bucky sits up and shuffles back against the headboard, bending his legs up in front of him. The sheet tents over his knees and helpfully hides his growing erection. He’s supposed to be contrite and ashamed of himself for his horrible behavior, not _aroused_. 

But he’s in bed beside Steve, and just thinking about this, with Steve _right there_ …

“And then how did you and Dominic start up?” Steve rolls onto his side now, looking up at Bucky.

“He knew I was watching, he saw me. So you can blame him for this whole thing just as much as me.” Bucky’s mostly kidding. Steve pretends to contemplate that for a moment and quickly shakes his head. 

“Don’t think I will.”

“Didn’t think so. Anyway…Gian – Dominic found me after you two were done and before I even really thought about it, I was licking the taste of you out of his mouth and off of his cock.”

“Hunh.” Steve makes a strange noise that Bucky can’t interpret as pleased or disgusted. Steve lifts his head from his pillow before Bucky can press him for clarification on that one. “You keep doing that, you know.”

“What?”

“You start calling him by a different name.”

“Yeah, well.” Steve waits expectantly for an explanation. Bucky sighs, embarrassed by what he’s going to admit and knowing Steve won’t like it. His face heats; he’s grateful for the darkness now. “I kinda thought his name was Giancarlo until about three days ago.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah...”

“I think that’s his brother.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” Steve pushes to prop himself up on his elbow and eyes Bucky like he’s not really sure he can believe this. “You really didn’t know who you were going with?”

“‘Going with’? Is that what we’re calling it?” Bucky chuckles, though it’s not exactly funny. “And no, of course I didn’t. Not most of the time, anyway. The only thing I needed to know about any of them is that they’d been with you. That’s all that mattered.”

Steve doesn’t reply to that; Bucky holds his stare, wishing he could guess what Steve’s thinking. He used to be able to read Steve’s every mood, but they’re still off-kilter, out of alignment with one another. He doesn’t like it, and he doesn’t like how Steve’s looking at him now. 

“It’s not like you knew everyone you were screwing either,” Bucky mumbles, and instantly knows he misread Steve’s look as judgment when it was clearly something else. Steve’s expression shutters.

“I also didn’t know I had an audience,” he retorts coolly, and then flops down onto his back. Bucky knocks his head back against the wall, wincing. 

“Sorry, Steve, I’m a fucking jerk.”

“Maybe.” There’s a slight hint of warmth back in Steve’s tone and Bucky opens one eye to peer down at him. Steve is biting his bottom lip as if keeping back one of his crooked half-smiles, and from this angle, his dark eyelashes seem longer than ever as they sweep against his cheeks when he tilts his head up to return Bucky’s look. 

“I know you don’t believe me, but you really are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” Bucky says softly, forgetting everything else for a moment as he’s taken aback by how captivating Steve looks in the dim moonlight. “Don’t know how I was ignoring it all these years, but I’m all the more fool for it.” He reaches over and cradles Steve’s face against his palm. 

Steve doesn’t pull away, Bucky’s ill-advised comment at least ignored if not forgotten. Bucky brushes the flat of his thumb over those full lips, Steve giving easily when he nudges them slightly apart. 

He bites back a groan of frustrated pleasure when Steve slips his tongue out, wet and warm around his knuckle. 

“Steve,” Bucky breathes and surges into a kiss, hoping that he’s at least reading this one right. Steve opens to him easily. He pushes up onto his elbows again, meeting Bucky halfway.

They kiss until Bucky’s breathless and panting, and Steve’s near trembling in his arms. 

“Are you still hard?” Steve whispers against his mouth. Bucky clearly hadn’t hid his arousal well enough, but Steve doesn’t seem at all bothered by it. So Bucky nods, not wanting to break their kiss again. 

Steve tugs at the edges of the blanket and sheets, dragging them over Bucky’s knees and down his calves to pool around his ankles. The tip of his cock is already peeking from the waistband of his drawers. 

Bucky glances nervously at Steve’s reaction, feeling exposed. 

The only sign that Steve gives him is the way his fingers curl in the blankets draped over his own hip, like he’s stopping himself from touching something else.

Bucky would give absolutely anything for Steve’s mouth, Steve’s body. So it’s a disappointment when Steve pulls away, leaving him bereft. Steve moves back to his side of the bed, laying down and stretching out like he’s going to go back to sleep. 

“Touch yourself.”

“Steve.”

“I don’t think it’s unfair to say it’s my turn to watch, is it?”

“No, but I…”

Steve arches an eyebrow and then brushes a stray lock of hair from his eyes.

“You don’t have to,” Steve says, like it really doesn’t matter to him one way or another. The way the sheets cling to the bulge between his thighs says differently, but Bucky isn’t in a position to argue. “But that’s the only way you’re coming tonight.”

Bucky hesitates, wondering if Steve really means it, if he’s actually going to go through with this. 

“So you want me to…” Bucky makes a motion in the air like he’s jerking off.

“Whatever you need to do.”

“Whatever I…” Bucky starts to repeat, exasperated. What he _needs_ is Steve all over him, inside him, around him, just _closer_ , just _Steve._

His hand slips down and rubs over his hard length through the thin fabric of his shorts and his cock gives an excited twitch. Knowing Steve is going to be looking leaves Bucky in equal parts anticipation and anxiety. He considers his position for a moment, realizing that laying flat on his side of the bed makes it more awkward to both look at what he’s doing to himself and what that’s doing to Steve. 

He sits up and moves to kneel, facing Steve. Shoving his underwear down around his thighs, Bucky spits in his palm and then takes himself in hand. Steve fucking licks his lips, not coy enough to be doing it consciously, and Bucky could punch him for not letting them touch right now. 

He takes his first few strokes slow, fist curling around his length and pulling firm and tight before twisting a little around the head. He likes that, and likes to brush his thumb just under the tip, the ridge of his nail slightly sharp against the slit. 

He watches his own hand on his cock, trying to imagine what it must look like for Steve. With a mixture of embarrassment and excitement, Bucky forces himself to lift his gaze to Steve once more.

His dick swells against this palm, a drop of pre-come pearling and then dripping over his knuckles and onto his thigh when he sees how dark Steve’s eyes are, how shallow his breathing. The last vestige of his embarrassment begins to slowly fade and he starts urging his hips into each drag of his fist, thinking about how carefully he’d roll each thrust if he were fucking Steve instead of his own hand. 

“What was your favorite time?” Steve asks. “When you were watching me, what got you off the hardest?”

“Fuck, Steve, really?” Bucky’s movements stutter. He’s heard filth from Steve’s lips before, but it never stops throwing him for a loop. He doesn’t know if he will ever cease getting a jarring thrill from dirty words in that innocent mouth. 

“You’re the one who _liked_ watching.”

“ _Steve._ ”

“Tell me.”

He doesn’t know what to say, at first. But there is one memory that’s seen more play during his private time than others, even if when it happened it had barely registered. Hot and heady to be sure, but just another of Steve’s one-off encounters. It was only later that he realized how often he re-visited it in his imagination.

“You were holding yourself up over some guy’s lap, your back to his chest, I couldn’t even see his face. He was big though, so big I didn’t even know how you were taking it.” If Steve knows which occasion Bucky’s remembering, he doesn’t show it. He just waits for Bucky to continue. “When you’re flat on your back, Steve, god, you come so much, it just gets everywhere. But when you’re riding someone, when someone’s got you angled back like that and they’re fucking up into you…”

“What?” 

“You come _so hard_. You enjoy it the most, you feel it the most.” This time in particular, Steve’s cock had even stayed erect after he came, his dick hard and long and wet against the crease of his hip until long after his orgasm subsided. 

“Hmmm.” Steve shifts against the bed, his gaze darting between Bucky’s face and Bucky’s moving hand. 

“And since I couldn’t see the guy’s face, it was just that much easier to pretend it was me. That I was the one inside you, that I was the one making you feel that way, that you were coming because of me. I wish it’d been me.”

“Should have been,” Steve whispers.

“I’m not going to last,” Bucky gasps, surprised by how quickly he’s speeding toward the edge. Just knowing that Steve is watching him do this, that Steve _wants_ him to do this, was already enough, and discussing this memory is making it impossible to hold off. “Can I come on you? Please, _please_ , at least let me come on you.”

Steve’s will to leave all the physical action to Bucky is obviously gone; he rolls onto his back and throws back the sheets, revealing his bare chest. 

Bucky gets the message. He hurriedly straddles Steve’s body, knees on either side of his slim hips, and starts stroking himself downward. 

“Bucky…” His name, desperate on Steve’s lips, sets something on fire inside of him and his orgasm hits him so hard that he nearly doubles over. He loses control of his body, the first spurt going high and streaking the side of Steve’s face. He barely manages to aim the rest over Steve’s stomach and chest, haphazardly painting Steve’s pale skin with his come.

He’s shaking when Steve’s steady hands come to his hips. He urges Bucky forward and takes Bucky’s spent cock into his mouth. 

“Oh my _god_ ,” Bucky groans, his own hands instinctively going to grab both sides of Steve’s head, take him by the hair and just hold him there because it feels so _unbelievably good_. He manages not to, instead leaning forward slightly and taking hold of the top of the headboard. 

Steve sucks on his still leaking tip, licks around the head, laps up and down his length. Bucky shudders; his stomach muscles quiver, his dick feeling like its damn near vibrating in Steve’s loose grasp. He’s overcome with sensation and it’s almost too much, like he’s going to come out of his own skin and never find his way back. 

“ _Steve_ –” Bucky gasps, another spurt of come splashing over the flat of Steve’s tongue. He can’t tell if his orgasm is over; he’s so damn hard, so sensitive. He feels like if Steve asked him to fuck him right now, he could do it, could do it without missing a beat. 

Steve lets his cock drop from his lips, wet and sloppy. Bucky, breathing hard and smiling like a dope, reaches down and wipes his hand through the mess on Steve’s face. He gathers the thick liquid on his thumb and pushes it toward Steve’s mouth. Steve turns his head into the gesture, tongue seeking out the taste. 

As soon as Steve swallows, Bucky ducks his head and kisses him. They’re still kissing when Bucky lies down beside Steve, his legs gently tangling with Steve’s still blanket-covered ones. He slips his hand down Steve’s chest, the ripple of his ribs delicate under thin skin, and slides his fingers beneath Steve’s loose underwear. 

The fabric is already wet, the thatch of hair damp, his skin sticky. Steve’s cock is half-hard, but on its way down and not up. 

That Steve came just from watching him leaves him speechless; he makes an undignified noise against Steve’s mouth and Steve responds with the curve of a small, amused smile.

“You owe me a year more of that,” Steve says before pushing harder into their kiss, wrapping his arms around Bucky’s back.

“I’ll give you way more than a year.” Bucky promises. He’s looking forward to paying the debt.


End file.
